Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult Books #10: Space Camp Page 6

  And then there were those who sought to separate the lucky fortune-seekers from their new fortunes. It was those that Odo kept a close eye on.

  “Quark!”

  “What is it now, Odo?” Quark grumbled as he sat at the empty bar running numbers through a touch pad.

  Odo stepped over next to the Ferengi, tossing a look at the calculations as he sat down on the adjoining stool. “How’s business?”

  “Are you making polite conversation, or really interested?” Quark glanced up for a moment, then continued with his calculations.

  Odo reached over and deftly removed the touch pad from Quark’s grasp and pulled it over for a closer look. “I see your Dabo wheel is turning a handsome profit.”

  The Ferengi grabbed for the touch pad but Odo held it out of reach. “That’s private,” Quark yelled. “There’s nothing illegal about making a profit.”

  “Depends on what you’re doing to make it.”

  “Odo, you check the Dabo wheel at least three times a week. Has it ever been off balance by even a nanometer?”

  “No. The wheel is quite stable.” Odo handed the touch pad back to Quark, then looked across the room to where the Dabo wheel was located. “It’s the environment surrounding it that concerns me.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Quark said, but the way he rubbed his lobes indicated that he just might.

  Odo got up and strolled over toward the Dabo wheel. Quark followed.

  “You wouldn’t try to tamper with the wheel itself. While you might fool station security, the professional gamblers who frequent the place would be quick to catch on to any tricks.”

  “They’d also be a lot less understanding than you if they caught me doing anything unethical,” Quark replied. “Which they haven’t,” he quickly added.

  “The wheel is fine,” Odo said. “It’s not the problem.” He stepped over to the nearby wall where several large containers were stored. They were each marked with Cardassian Export stamps.

  “Cardassian rock wine,” Quark said. “Would you like me to open the containers to prove it?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Odo said, standing in front of the containers. “I’m surprised you do a big business in Cardassian rock wine … with all your Bajoran customers?”

  “So, I got stuck with a bad deal. Sue me.”

  “I suppose you keep it out here because it’s not a high-profit item, and you don’t mind if it spoils.” Odo looked at Quark. “You do know it’ll spoil out here in the open?”

  Quark appeared to be shocked at this news. “It’s Rom’s fault. I leave the storage up to him.”

  “Everything that happens in this place is up to you. No Ferengi would have it otherwise.”

  “Odo, I really am busy. Unless this all has a point, I’d like to get back to work.”

  “The point is that Cardassian rock wine turns slightly magnetic when it spoils.” Odo looked over at the Dabo wheel and then back at the containers. “I suppose these containers are close enough to the Dabo wheel to alter the odds … just enough to give the house an extra edge.”

  Quark gasped. “You can’t possibly be accusing me of doing something like that deliberately?”

  Odo smiled. “Of course not. I just thought I should bring it to your attention. If this became station news … well, there might be some people who might get the wrong idea.”

  Quark yelled over his shoulder, “Rom! Get out of here right now!”

  “I knew you wouldn’t have gotten away with this, brother,” Rom said after he had managed to carry the last of the wine containers into the storage room.

  “You should have removed the labels, then Odo wouldn’t have known.”

  “If I did that, then our Security Chief might have had proof I did something wrong,” Quark replied.

  “Didn’t you?”

  “I simply let nature take its course.”

  Tired from all his work, Rom sat down and wiped the sweat from his ears. “By the way, thank you.”

  “Thank you?” Quark asked. “For what?”

  “For giving Nog that holocube to take to Space Camp. He’ll bring back great images.”

  “I’m hoping he’ll bring back more than that.”

  Rom looked at his brother. “I don’t understand.”

  “The holocube,” Quark explained in a hushed voice. “It’s programmed to tap into any computer systems within a two-mile radius.”

  “You mean you’re going to try and break into the Starfleet computers?” Rom was impressed at his brother’s cunning, which seemed to have no boundaries.

  Quark made a noncommittal smile. “If Nog happens to bring back some … ah, additional images … well, so much the better. The information can be sold for a nice profit—making up for losing Nog’s services for two weeks.”

  Back on Rijar, unaware of the holocube’s real purpose, Nog stared at the swirling images in the crystal and pondered what to do. Jake, who had been his friend, was now doing everything in his power to undermine him. He obviously wanted Dyan for his girlfriend and it didn’t matter that Nog had selected her first.

  He would have to do something drastic to level the playing field. Actually he wanted to tilt it to the point where Jake went sliding off. But what could he do to embarrass his rival?

  Looking at the images in the holocube, Nog suddenly came up with the perfect plan. He knew even his uncle, Quark, would have been proud of what he was about to do.

  Sometime later, Jake sat with Dyan in a meadow of warm summer grass. They were in Old England in the days of that master bard, William Shakespeare. It was the perfect location for unveiling Jake’s own poetry.

  He was proud of his work, having never attempted something as complex as this: his first holographic poem. Jake had borrowed Space Camp’s holosuite for the performance and invited Dyan as his solo audience.

  “This place is lovely,” Dyan said. “Is this what you wanted to show me?”

  “Not exactly,” Jake replied, taking out his touch pad and bringing up the program. “I thought you might enjoy this.”

  “I love surprises.” Dyan smiled. “But didn’t you want to invite the others?”

  “Well, I wanted your opinion first. I trust your comments.”

  “Thank you, Jake. I feel honored.”

  Jake sat back on the grass and leaned against a tall oak, as close as he could get to Dyan without seeming too forward. Most girls Jake felt completely comfortable with. It wasn’t until he was with someone special like Dyan, who he was really interested in, that he felt all thumbs.

  “I’m ready any time you are,” Dyan said.

  “Oh…” Jake stammered a moment, until he realized she was waiting for his holopoem to start.

  “Computer, begin special program Jake-One.”

  He had already uploaded the program from his touch pad into the holosuite’s computer. His holopoem would be added to the current program as a plug-in.

  There was a moment, and then the sky began to slowly darken. It was midsummer in Old England, and out on the lawn strange and magical things were about to happen. Or so Jake had written in his poem.

  It began with a pair of tiny winged silver fairies who darted out from the trees and began sprinkling magic pixie dust over Jake and Dyan.

  “How cute,” she said when she saw them.

  “They’re called fairies. Little flying creatures from Earth’s mythology. The magical pixie dust they sprinkle brings happiness…”

  Dyan sneezed.

  Not quite the response Jake had anticipated. Then he sneezed.

  The fairies were not sprinkling pixie dust, but Odronix swamp extract-sneezing powder.

  “Fairies, begone,” Jake managed to shout between sneezes.

  They vanished, but the aroma of the Odronix swamps continued to pervade Old England, and their sneezing fits got worse. Jake had to do something to wash away the awful dust.

  “Rain, fall gently from above.” Jake had put a hint of a soft summ
er shower in his poem. He hoped it would be enough to wash away the irritating dust.

  It was more than enough.

  A gentle rain became a horrendous downpour. Jake and Dyan stopped sneezing, but now they were getting drenched. Even under the protective branches of the giant oak they were unable to escape the relentless torrent.

  “Rain, stop!” Jake shouted.

  The rain stopped, but they remained soaked to the skin.

  “Maybe you should terminate the program,” Dyan suggested.

  “This … isn’t what I planned. There must be a glitch in the holosuite computer.”

  “Someone mention my name?”

  The voice came from somewhere deep in the woods. It was a familiar voice.

  Jake had also programmed the mischievous Puck from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream into his poem. But the creature who materialized out of the trees did not come from Jake’s imagination—though it might have emerged from one of his nightmares.

  Green and small, dancing across the wet grass playing out of tune on a huge harp, he kind of looked like Puck—except for the big Ferengi-shaped ears.

  “This isn’t happening,” Jake groaned as he witnessed the disaster his holopoem had become.

  The Ferengi-Puck creature danced across the grass over to Dyan and kissed her lightly on the cheek. Then he danced over to Jake and was about to duplicate the deed.

  “Computer! Terminate program! Now!”

  CHAPTER 12

  Jake was angry enough to do something he knew he would regret later. But that was later; at the moment he wanted only one thing: to pay Nog back for ruining his poem—and his evening with Dyan.

  Brooding alone in the room he shared with Nog, Jake went through several possibilities, almost all of which were either illegal or might inflict physical harm on the little Ferengi. Mad as he was, Jake wanted only to humiliate Nog, not hurt him.

  Then Jake saw it—the perfect solution. Sitting on Nog’s desk was the holocube given to him by his uncle, Quark. It was programmed to download data from Nog’s touch pad, and probably had no way of determining whether that data was accurate or not.

  Well, Nog had ruined one story, so Jake would write another—one that would expose the “real” Nog when it was replayed back on Deep Space Nine.

  Jake sat down and was about to begin reprogramming Nog’s touch pad with new data that would be downloaded into the holocube. But that seemed to be an extra step, and so he simply reversed the touch pad’s sensors so that he could reprogram the holocube directly.

  Although he was angry now, Jake wanted to be able to undo his practical joke later. So he connected his own touch pad to the holocube and began to download the cube’s data into his own system. After Nog had been sufficiently humiliated, then Jake could replace the corrupted data. Perhaps they might even be friends again.

  “What’re you doing?” Nog had come into the room while Jake was working. He was enraged at what he saw.

  “I … was only…” Jake sought for some reasonable explanation of his actions.

  “You’re messing with my holocube,” Nog said, noting the obvious. “Uncle Quark’s cube,” he added, as if that fact would carry more weight.

  “I was doing exactly what you did to me,” Jake admitted, fearing the admission would sever their friendship forever.

  But Nog stopped at that point, and he actually smiled. “Now you’re acting like a Ferengi,” Nog said. “I never knew you could be so devious.”

  “I must have learned it from you,” Jake replied. While he didn’t intend it as a compliment, he was certain Nog would take it as one.

  There was a long moment of silence as the two friends turned foes stared at each other.

  Jake realized their confrontations were getting out of hand, and he hoped Nog felt the same. But backing down is one of the hardest things to do. Professor Kala had lectured them about that: “Once a fight starts it can escalate until it becomes almost impossible to stop. The trick is to prevent it from starting in the first place.”

  Jake wondered what his father would do if he were here. Then, as he thought about that and considered what to say to Nog, he noticed the holocube out of the corner of his eye.

  “Nog,” Jake exclaimed, pointing to the holocube. “Look!”

  Scrolling across the crystal face were strange images and icons. Nog looked and couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Did you do that?” he asked Jake.

  Jake shook his head. “That stuff on the crystal is alien—real alien.”

  “But what is it?” Nog approached the holocube.

  “Those icons … I’ve seen them somewhere before.” Jake stared at the scrolling data, trying to recall where he had seen something like that. “In the city,” he said.

  “What?”

  “We saw those same icons in the holosuite replica of the alien city.”

  “That’s where my tricorder must have picked them up,” Nog said.

  “You didn’t have your tricorder with you when we were there,” Jake reminded him.

  Jake suddenly had a hunch. His father had told him that hunches were insights that happened when a lot of seemingly unrelated and divergent data collided in the brain. Trust your hunches. Jake remembered the advice and was about to put it to use. He stepped over and scooped up the holocube.

  “Come on,” Jake said.

  “Where are we going?” Nog asked, even as he started to follow. The differences that had almost brought them to blows a minute ago were forgotten in the heat of the challenge to solve the puzzle.

  “You get Dyan and K’am. I’m going to pick up Professor Kala.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we’re going back to that pit K’am found. The answers may be there.”

  “Answers? To what?”

  “I think Dyan was right when she sensed ghosts on the planet,” Jake said. He looked at the holocube in his hand. “And I think you may have awakened them.”

  The pit that K’am had accidentally discovered when he fell into it was located several kilometers from Space Camp. They traveled in a land rover vehicle that skimmed across the sand, a half meter above the surface, on antigrav thrusters.

  “Couldn’t this have waited until morning?” Professor Kala asked Jake, who drove the vehicle, while Kala sat next to him. Nog, Dyan, and K’am were crowded into the rear compartment.

  “I think time might be important,” Jake said. He didn’t want to try to explain his theory until they were actually there. He was almost hoping it would be proven wrong.

  Through the windshield Jake could see the sky was turning black and the stars were blinking on one by one like tiny lights. In Rijar’s thin atmosphere they barely twinkled and it was almost like being out in space.

  By the time they reached their destination it had become night. Leaving the vehicle, the group put on night vision filters to see. Cautiously, with Jake in the lead, they approached the hole that led down to the pit.

  “Just what’re we doing back here?” Nog asked.

  “It’s because of your holocube,” Jake answered.

  “I’ll explain when we’re in the pit … or, I hope I will.”

  K’am carried an extendable ladder that allowed them to climb down into the pit. In spite of his age and extra weight, Professor Kala went down the ladder with the athletic prowess of a junior cadet. He never ceases to amaze me, Jake thought with admiration.

  “So now, young Sisko, will you explain what brought us here so urgently.”

  Jake took out the holocube and placed it into a niche in the wall. “Nog’s uncle, Quark, gave this to him to record his experiences at Space Camp.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Nog argued.

  “No,” Jake admitted, then added, “if that was all he intended. But Quark is known to be devious. Even more so than the average Ferengi.”

  Professor Kala stepped over and took a closer look at the holocube. “You suspect Quark had another motive than simply to record his nephew
’s accomplishments for the family holoalbum?”

  Jake nodded. “I think this holocube has been set to tap into local computer systems to steal information which Quark could later sell.”

  “If so, he would be disappointed,” Kala replied.

  “Starfleet computers are much too secure for this kind of simple Ferengi infiltration.”

  “Yes, but there might be another computer system that is vulnerable.”

  While all eyes were fixed on him, Jake activated the holocube. The strange alien images appeared in the crystal’s face. But now the images were much sharper than they had been back at Space Camp.

  “Nog used the holocube to record us when we first found this pit. Which is what it did. But I think it also found something else.”

  “Amazing.” Professor Kala was looking at the images scrolling rapidly on the holocube’s crystal face. “This looks like the Rijar language samples we’ve previously discovered.” He moved closer to the holocube and studied the images. “But these are different than anything we’ve found before.”

  “You mean I’ve discovered the secret of the aliens who lived here?” Nog asked. Jake could see him calculating the potential profits in his mind.

  “I’m afraid you’ve done more than that,” the professor said, and then he looked at Jake. “You’re obviously thinking what I am?”

  “The people who lived—and battled—here would have worried about enemies infiltrating their systems. They would have installed a security element.”

  “What kind of security element?” K’am asked.

  “My guess would be that they deep-mined this whole area,” Professor Kala answered. “If someone penetrated their system, it would trigger a self-destruct mechanism to activate those mines.”

  “But why haven’t the mines gone off?” K’am asked.

  “They would probably have given themselves time to evacuate,” Professor Kala replied. “I also suspect that a final initiation would not occur until invaders gained physical access to their control center.”

  “Which we might be on the verge of doing,” Jake said, realizing that coming here might have been a mistake.